for the Mail Tribune

Watching Nancy Hawkins of Ashland hike with her two canines, you notice something different about the animals — the erect ears, the narrow, upward-curving snout, the lean, athletic body, the quick alertness — and you have to ask, "What are they?"

&byline;They're "boonie dogs" — descendents of wild dogs who've lived in the outback of the South Pacific islands for thousands of years, eating small rodents and lizards and occasionally being tamed and loved by humans.

Hawkins, a triathlete, Olympic coach and physical education professor, found Penny and Suzee in Guam, where she taught for 22 years. She said she nursed them back from the brink of death and tried to calm their wariness with lots of tender loving care.

As a member of the Guam Running Club, Hawkins would set out food along her workout route for boonie dogs, who are overpopulated, starving and afflicted with mange, she said.

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In 1999, Hawkins adopted Suzee, hairless and starved, after the dog was rescued by a friend. As a volunteer with Guam Animals in Need, Hawkins also played foster parent to other rescued dogs. When one was adopted out, leaving Suzee alone in the house, Suzee would become depressed and would run away and hide from people. She needed a friend, Hawkins said.

It was not long in coming. Another boonie dog, Penny, was being kept by GAIN, which told Hawkins the animal could not be held back from euthanasia much longer. Without skipping a beat, Hawkins took her, and they all became fast friends.

Indigenous to many Micronesian islands, boonie dogs are closely related to dingoes, Hawkins said.

The Encyclopedia Britannica says dingoes are indigenous to nearby Australia, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines and New Guinea. Hawkins' research with the University of Guam Biology Department showed boonies are not canis familiaris (domestic dogs) but are closest to dingoes.

"Boonie dogs are born to feral mothers in the woods and never have contact with humans," Hawkins said. "They're not aggressive and will run from people. The only humans they see are usually aggressive to them.

"They have short lives and succumb to starvation and mange."

Although they prefer canine companionship above human, boonie dogs are gentle, social and desirable as companions. But if you want one, which few Guamanians did, you have to trap it with a cage and tame it with food and caring, said Hawkins, who returned to Oregon 18 months ago to retire. She had lived in Ashland before and is a graduate of the University of Oregon.

Hawkins said the breed has strong genes and proliferates in a degraded environment where, with human expansion, there's not enough food.

She keeps Penny and Suzee at her side on walks around her Hersey Street neighborhood. Her boonie dogs are both 8 years old and have an interdependent relationship, with Penny often grooming and comforting Suzee, who was much more stressed and closer to death when she was rescued.

Scientists have an ongoing debate about wolves, dogs and dingoes — who came first and who sprang off what family tree — but Central Point dog behaviorist and dingo owner Jan Koler-Matznik believes dingoes are their own species, not related to wolves, but sharing a common ancestor with dogs some 40,000 to 70,000 years ago. The oldest pure dingo fossils, 5,000 years old, are found in Thailand and Vietnam.

Hawkins' canines should properly be called Pacific village dogs or "pariah dogs," said Koler-Matznik. Dogs that are rescued are spayed or neutered and not allowed to return to the hazards of the wild, said Hawkins.

Hawkins' animals get along with dogs and do a lot of nuzzling, cuddling and curling up, even sleeping with one of Hawkins' cats. They and their cousins fit the same description — mid-size, 25 to 40 pounds, light tan to russet to dark brown. They are opportunistic scavengers and, said Hawkins, once you get to know them, friends for life.

John Darling is a freelance writer living in Ashland. E-mail him at jdarling@jeffnet.org.